things to remember

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life moves fast these days. i try to slow it down, but it plows ahead, ignoring my pleas for a more glacial pace.

on any given day i find myself at one extreme or the other of the continuum between pushing keane to the next step of growth and development, and wanting him to stay little forever. i need to remember how blessed i am to have him.

i'm currently in the midst of writing down his story. our story of having him - and the 40 months of trying for a baby before my pregnancy with him. i don't know if anything will ever come of writing down his story, but even if it's just for him to read, and to know how much we wanted him, that's okay.

lately i find myself wanting and wishing for more time. i want more time with keane, but i also want more time to devote to other pursuits and stay a well-rounded person. and that is hard to do with a 10 month old [or a younger little baby, or more than one child, or a child who runs around all over the place, or...].

i need to remember that there are seasons to life, and appreciate the season i'm in, while simultaneously pushing myself constantly to not just settle and get complacent. i need to be realistic about expectations, but not use that as an excuse to not do things.

we still have hopes, and dreams, and those things do not just up and happen one day. getting there takes work. behind the scenes, constant, ongoing, hard work.

we often see the end of the hard work. we see what happens after one has worked really hard, and gotten to the place they want to be. many of us see the end result and think - i want that. i want to get to that place too. but i don't want to do the work it takes to get to that place.

we don't see the slogging through the dirt and the crap to achieve that position. we don't see the quiet determination it takes to get there, we just see the end result.

sometimes i think that we just see the world in pictures. we see the world in snippets, but those snippets are not an accurate description of the world. the facebook society we live in is a fake society. people's lives are not just their status updates, and the pictures they post. just because someone only posts about the good things in their world does not mean they don't have struggles.

we lie to each other all the time. we have this fixation with needing to be happy all the time, and trying to convince other people and ourselves that we're just thrilled with what is going on, even when we're not.

we want to be self-sufficient, and self-reliant, so much that we lie to each other and struggle alone.

so here it is. my struggles right now are as follows:

do i go back to work, and work part-time? i know i don't want to work full-time, but i would like something else to at least partially devote myself to outside of the house. should i feel guilty about feeling that way? because i do. i do feel guilty for wanting some other small thing to have a hand in, especially since i don't even feel like i adequately take care of my responsibilities at home.

i never thought i would be someone who needed to go back to work. and i don't need to from a financial perspective - we can make it work without a second income. i just want to, and i didn't expect that.

i also struggle with writing. i want to write. i want to be a writer of some kind, but i struggle with putting myself out there. it's scary. writing in such a way that exposes your soul is really the only kind worth putting down on paper, but it's terrifying to think of putting your very self out there, and having someone tell you it's not good enough. because if it's not good enough then what they're saying is you aren't good enough. you are not enough.

and that is hard. it's hard to not be good enough, even if it's true in that context.

it's hard to go after something big not just because big things tend to be difficult, but also because the bigger the goal, the more likely it is to fail. the harder it is to achieve. and my whole life i've struggled with the idea of being branded a failure.

but i have not been given a spirit of fear. and that is something i need to remember. i also need to remember psalm 46:5 --

God is within her, she will not fall;

God will help her at break of day.

God is in control. always. every day. no matter what. not a sparrow falls to the ground outside of his hand. i have nothing to fear. my God is so much bigger than failure. and if i fail on this earth, may i fail to the glory of God.

much love to you

xo